If Britain is to invest intelligently in its own defence we might be wise to start out by ensuring we are better at supplying food - Andy Brown

It is said that the first duty of any government is to look to the defence of the nation. I’m not so sure. I think the first duty is to make sure we get fed. During both World Wars there was huge concern that the population would be starved into submission.

Winston Churchill wrote in his account of his war leadership that he never thought the country would lose on the battlefield but he did have his moments of doubt about what would happen if the food shortages got even worse.

Dig for victory was not just a slogan. It was the reality of life in Britain throughout the war years. A massive effort was made to use every inch of land that could supply food but it still wasn’t enough. Supply could be increased but near complete food security takes time and advance investment to achieve.

That lesson about the vulnerability of lacking sufficient local production has been largely forgotten. Britain currently imports around 48 per cent of its food. We even bring in crops like apples that can easily be grown and stored here and foodstuffs that carry a hefty carbon footprint without providing many essential nutrients.

There are plenty of risks to chains of supply that arrive just in time on our supermarket shelves and depend on complex shipping or air freight routes. As Donald Trump and the latest Ayatollah of Iran have been busy teaching us, it is very easy for product prices to spike when important shipping routes get closed off.

It is bad enough for a country to face power shortages because of over dependence on oil and gas coming from unpleasant dictatorships in unstable parts of the world. It is even more risky to have your food supplies depending on international trade routes at a time of increasing likelihood of military conflicts disrupting supply chains.

If this country is to spend a lot of money on making sure it can defend itself then the first target of that spending should not be on vanity weapons like aircraft carriers that can no longer be sailed into any war zone where there are cheap and effective drones targeting them. The first priority needs to be to make sure we can feed ourselves and don’t have to try and defend vulnerable supply lines thousands of miles from home.

To do that we need to plan for two significant changes. One is to try and alter the way we eat so a lot more is consumed in line with the seasons. We have grown used to the idea that we can have any foodstuff we want at any time of year we want. If we are to make full use of what can be produced in Britain then we need to learn the skill of cooking and eating different things at different times of year and enjoying seasonal pleasures.

What is also necessary is a change in what we encourage our farmers to produce and how they produce it. Britain has lost many of its orchards and has the potential to produce massively greater supplies of locally grown nuts as well as fruit.

Growing those trees is good for nature as well as good for food security and yet we are paying subsidies for planting of trees that produce no food whatsoever and doing so in closely packed plantations that are incredibly vulnerable to wildfires.

It can take over a decade to start to get food supplies from something like a walnut tree and even the most rapidly growing fruit orchard represents a serious investment risk for a farmer. Equipment to pick and store the crops brings extra cost at a time when there is a shortage of seasonal farm labour willing to pick fruit.

That means we need to get serious about subsidising our farmers and a lot more thoughtful about how we help them to produce food whilst also fostering soil health and homes for a rich variety of wildlife.

Increasing the acreage of arable crops and providing more market garden greenhouses is another important part of the mix which can’t be achieved without increasing subsidies and improving the targeting of them.

It is a lot easier to produce enough food locally to feed our entire population if that population is eating a healthy quantity of fruit and veg and relies on a lower proportion of animal products that require a lot more land to provide the same level of calories.

Clearly there are risks to trying to feed a country entirely from its own produce. It only requires one bad harvest and you are in trouble. So the policy aim should not be 100 per cent home consumption of home produce. There is a real need to export surpluses and import shortages.

Yet we do need to develop the capability to produce much closer to 100 per cent of our food in a crisis. Adolph Hitler used to tell the German population that they could have guns or butter. Too many of them believed his crazed suggestion that they needed the guns. If Britain is to invest intelligently in its own defence we might be wise to start out by ensuring we are better at supplying food than military bravado.

Andy Brown is Green party councillor for Aire Valley.